Special interest

When I was a child, I was obsessed with a book called ‘The Vincent HRD Gallery’ by Roy Harper. I loved that book, mainly as it had pictures of every Vincent and HRD made, and I was in the habit of drawing little pictures of motorbikes (a line around an old 10 pence piece for the wheels normally) and that book was manna from heaven, as it had slab-sided pictures of all the Howard Davies and Phillip Vincent produced machines.

Consequently, I knew my HRD Super 90 from my Vincent-HRD TT Replica and Vincent Series D Victor well before my 10th birthday, and had pretty much replicated every motorcycle in there in my own (tiny) style, later graduating to a set of compasses to draw the wheels, particularly after I realised that post-Second World War Vincents in general had a 20-inch front wheel and a 19-inch rear. Which made the 10p redundant.

So when talking to John Oakes, custodian (more of that later) of this sparkling Model P, and John mentioned the rare model, I knew exactly which he meant. To